ATI has learned that being the king of graphics means you must raise the bar for performance with each product release. The Radeon HD 4850 X2 is the latest evolution in graphics cards, and ATI delivers a product nearly as grand as their Radeon HD 4870 X2. We has been fortunate to check out the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 dual-GPU video card against a collection of todays hottest video cards available. At some undetermined point in late June of 2008, ATI gained ground on the competition in small steps. AMD launched several enthusiast level processors, lifting them up out of a wild tailspin. And around the same time, ATI launched their Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. - Benchmark Reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB Video Card Review

Of course, none of these manufacturers simply released their products and sat on their hands. NVIDIA followed up with the GeForce 9800 GTX+, a 55nm part that would better cope with the now popular Radeon HD 4850 card. Sapphire answered back with a Toxic version of the Radeon HD 4850 that offered improved performance through factory overclocking and after market cooling. Not long afterwards, Zotac responded with their GeForce GTX 260 which updated the GPU of 216 cores. Perhaps it's only natural to have Sapphire get the last word in, with their Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card as a next response.

And the newest edition to the Radeon family takes a complete new approach to component layout and appearance. There's a lot of questions we have when it comes to building a twin-GPU graphics card, how much cooling does it need, and how much power will it really consume? The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics board comes in non ATI themed black and offers a double slot sized product for the PCI Express 2.0 bus. There are a few small details that seem to stand out as either interesting or unique, and we'll make sure to discuss each at length. And also compare these with other ATI family products.

Sapphire utilizes a full length cooling unit to keep these two RV770 GPU's within operating specifications. While it obviously seems to be working, we are curious how ATI avoided a total meltdown considering how hot a single Radeon HD 4850 can get. The twin cooling fans are located directly above the GPU's, and pushes air to both ends of the cooler. While the majority of heat produced by the twin GPU's is exhausted out the rear near the power connections, some residual heat is expelled from holes in the sides of the heatsink shroud. This is a great way to get rid of the heat of the two graphics cores, and to keep the heat in check.

So in terms of performance, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 usually performed directly in between the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4870 X2, but rarely excelled past CrossFireX performance of the Radeon HD 4850. The barely beta drivers wreaked havok on our testing, causing many of our benchmarks to be removed from this article until we can retest with more mature software. There were some issues testing with 3DMark Vantage, but otherwise all tests were stable, just not consistent in performance results. Value is always relative to supply and demand, along with whatever retailers think they can get.

Sapphire has indicated the initial launch price will be $419. At the time of launch, a single Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 is being offered by Newegg for $159 making for a sub-$300 CrossFireX configuration with equal or better performance. The Radeon HD 4850 X2 might have a tough time convincing buyers with a painful economy putting pressure on budgets. And since a single Radeon HD 4850 X2 is going to cost less than two Radeon HD 4850's for a CrossFireX set, this pricing seems to fall in-line with expectations. And extreme gamers will find this high-end product to provide enough performance to justify the price.

In conclusion, our final recommendation on this Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card is good, but at the moment AMD has got some work to do on the drivers. Much like any other CrossFire solutions, the X2 series requires the Catalyst software to manage the combined efforts while the driver negotiates the application workload. Taking the expected price into consideration, you have to look at other comparable offerings. It's no surprise that CrossFire is available on just about every single motherboard that fits an Intel or AMD processors, though the same is hardly true for the SLI technology. So then it's down to price.

Since NVIDIA submitted to ATI's price point, heavily overclocked versions of both the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 are now offered around the same cost. At the end of this point there's really no decisive victory to be handed out until ATI refines the performance of their software.